1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a linked contents browsing support device, relates to a linked contents browsing support method, relates to a program which executes the method to enable a user to quickly and efficiently browse contents (linked contents) connected with an anchor (a hyperlink), an icon, or the like which has a linked destination, and also to enable the user to quickly return to the state before browsing the linked contents, and relates to a recording medium storing the program. Furthermore, the present invention relates to a linked contents continuous browsing support device, relates to a linked contents continuous browsing support method, relates to a program which executes the method to enable a user to continuously browse linked contents, and relates to a recording medium storing the program.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2002-347196 filed Nov. 29, 2002, and Japanese Patent Application No. 2003-271599 filed Jul. 7, 2003, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
With a browser for the WWW (World Wide Web) or a file management application (Explorer or the like) in a GUI (Graphical User Interface) environment, the user selects an anchor or an icon or the like with a mouse cursor, and, by clicking it, browses the contents (hereinafter termed the linked contents) which have been connected to each anchor or icon.
As such an anchor, there may be a segment of text or a graphical item in an HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) document or the like which fulfills the function of establishing a link between some contents and some other contents, and this is termed “marking” or “linking”.
When the user wishes to know of what information the linked contents consists, he clicks upon the anchor (the link) in a browser or the like to access the linked contents, and browses the linked contents.
Here, if the linked contents do not consist of the information which the user desires and he accordingly wishes to return to the contents previously browsed (which includes the anchor previously clicked), then it becomes necessary for him to perform clicking operation in order to close the linked contents and to return to these contents previously browsed. With browsing action for linked contents, generally, the user must repeatedly perform such movement between contents as above described until he reaches the desired linked contents. Furthermore, since a large number of anchors or icons or the like may be present, in order to view the desired linked contents from among them, it is necessary repeatedly to perform the above operations for each one of these anchors or icons, the burden imposed upon the user by such operations may thereby become very great.
Furthermore, for a browser to present linked contents, methods may be employed for presenting the linked contents by substituting them for the contents which were previously being displayed in the browser, or for presenting them in a new browser. However, since, with such methods for presentation of linked contents by such clicking operation or presentation of linked contents in a browser, the system does not continue to present the contents which the user has been browsing up until that moment along with the new contents, there is a problem in that the flow of thought of the user is interrupted, so that the efficiency of browsing of the contents deteriorates. In particular, when the user is following up linked contents in order, so that he is continuously browsing some contents, this method is inefficient, and the procedure is very inconvenient for the user.
In this connection, in order to solve this problem, various techniques have been proposed as methods for supporting simple and efficient browsing of linked contents.
For example, there is a technique which has been implemented in Windows (registered trademark) Explorer, in which, when the mouse cursor is put on an anchor or an icon (before it is clicked), its summary or a preview image is displayed in a pop-up window; and, when the mouse cursor is moved from the anchor or the icon, this pop-up window is closed.
Moreover, there is also a technique for writing a tag for pop-up display with Java (registered trademark) Script or with DHTML (Dynamic HTML) in an anchor in advance, and for pop-up displaying the linked contents which this anchor indicates when the mouse cursor is put upon the anchor. Such techniques are described, for example: in paragraphs [0004] through [0008] and paragraphs [0011] through [0045] of Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. Hei 11-003201 (hereinafter termed “Patent Reference 1”); in paragraphs [0021] through [0043] of Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2000-276471 (hereinafter termed “Patent Reference 2”); in the publication “inlineLink: Inline Expansion Link Methods in Hypertext Browsing”, by Motoki Miura, Buntarou Shizuki and Jiro Tanaka, Proceedings of International Conference on Internet Computing (IC2001), June 2001, Vol. II, pp. 653-659; and in the publication “Zero-Click: a system to support Web-browsing”, by Tomoyuki Nanno, Suguru Saito, and Manabu Okumura, 63rd Information Processing Society of Japan, Proceedings of the 60th National Convention, 2J-06, 2001.
However, with conventional pop-up display methods, it is necessary to set in advance, for each anchor or icon or the like, information related to the linked contents (attribute information, text information, a thumbnail image or the like), or Java (registered trademark) Script for performing the pop-up display, in addition to the linked contents. Furthermore, it is necessary to create in advance the information related to the linked contents which is to be displayed in the pop-up window, separately from the linked contents themselves. Due to this, with conventional methods, it is necessary to determine, at the time of setting an anchor or an icon, in other words, at the time of creating HTML documents or the contents which are indicated by an icon, whether or not the pop-up display function will be utilized and the contents to be pop-up displayed, and this is undesirable; moreover, it is not possible to add a pop-up display function dynamically at the time of browsing operation by the user, or to create and edit its displayed contents.
Furthermore, with conventional techniques, the focus has been upon operational methods for performing browsing action of linked contents in a simple manner, and there has been no real consideration of what type of information it might be best to present as the information which is displayed in a pop-up window in relation to the linked contents, or as to the best type of format in which it should be presented; in other words, there has been no emphasis put upon proper editing and display methods for the information. However, if the display region for the information is small, such as a pop-up display window, then study of editing and display methods for the information which is to be presented in this manner are considered to be particularly important.
Furthermore, with conventional techniques, only a linked content indicated by an anchor or an icon in a browser or in an application is pop-up displayed.
In other words, browsing over multiple linked contents continuously, for example, display of the second linked contents (a grandchild window) which are indicated by an anchor or an icon in the first linked contents (a child window) which have been pop-up displayed from an anchor or an icon in a browser window or the like (a parent window) has not been contemplated.
To put it in another way, no control method for pop-up windows has yet been contemplated, with which it is possible to perform continuous browsing of multiple linked contents efficiently (refer to Patent Reference 2).
Furthermore, as has been described above, in none of the conventional techniques has the focus been addressed to an operation method for making it easy to perform operation for browsing linked contents, and no consideration has been given with regard to the position and to the display size of the pop-up window in which the linked contents are to be displayed.
However it is believed that, if multiple linked contents are to be pop-up displayed continuously within a region of a desktop screen which is relatively limited, investigation related to the position and to the display size of each window (pop-up window) within which pop-up display is to be performed is of particularly great importance.